


the Empress

by myrskytuuli



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Dark padme, Empress Padmé Amidala, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-23
Updated: 2018-01-23
Packaged: 2019-03-08 13:56:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13459686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myrskytuuli/pseuds/myrskytuuli
Summary: In a galaxy far far away, the Empress rules supreme, the rebellion exists on a sliver of hope, and secrets still run rampant in the Skywalker family.Palpatine should not have underestimated the non force-sensitives when he made his plans. (Or that dark side of the force is not the only dark side.)





	the Empress

When the republic fell, Padmé screamed. When her husband’s life was extinguished in the flames of Mustafar, Padmé screamed. When the chancellor named himself the emperor, Padmé screamed. There was not much else that she could have done, as she was at the time busy giving birth. It was a messy business, creating life and Padmé barely remembers anything. Flashes here and there. The voice of the medical droid, aiming for soothing and failing. Blood. Pain. Screams. Something inside her ripping, so that it will never quite settle again. The metallic voice of the droid. Harder. One more push. More pain.

Life. Love. creating something perfect.

Many time in her life, Padmé has compared the birth of the empire to the experience of actual birth. The memories are very much the same.

But the empire she got to keep. The only one of her children to survive.

 

* * *

 

 

The planet of Tatooine was emancipated 19 years ago, which of course doesn’t mean that there aren’t any slaves in Tatooine. It means that nobody in the empire can no longer be born a slave. Children born to slave parents are taken to one of the several homes for orphaned children. In these facilities, children with no parents are given the utmost care and a thorough education in the teachings and philosophies of the empress, and the ways of the empire.

Many of the lost children grow up to become politicians, senators for their home-planets, clearly the consequence of superb teaching offered to them.

Luke Lars is happy that he has parents who are willing to take care of him. He knows that he is an orphan, and therefore it was probably at some point debated if he should be taken to an academy for the orphaned children. Luckily, he had extended family willing to adopt. (He would like to know more about the Whitesuns, his birth family, but records for former slave families are almost non-existent, so Luke has to let the dead keep their secrets.) Only once has Luke met a graduate from the academy, and she is now the mayor of Tatooine. She gives speeches that are formed by cutting and rearranging the same sentences over and over from the _Philosophies of the Empire._

When Luke walks through the market, he can see the slaves working in the heat. They are a miserable sight, more dead than living. Luke has become numb to seeing them, but the dirty feeling of walking past them never goes away.

They are criminals, the mayor says. The empire does not tolerate slavery, but for those caught practicing crimes against the empire, the punishment is labour. Work will teach the criminals morals and work will in the end set them free. It is not slavery, it is justice. Most of the slaves in Tatooine are former slave owners themselves. This does not make Luke feel better walking past them.

The name Skywalker is of course familiar to Luke Lars. The name Skywalker is familiar to everyone in the galaxy. There is a statue on the city square of Mos Eisley, as there is in every city-square belonging to the empire, made to honour the hero with no fear. General of the clone wars. Jedi knight. Anakin Skywalker. The fallen husband of her highness, the Empress.

The statue has fallen into decay under the cruel winds and bright suns of Tatooine. On the outer rim, the people are far less inclined to invest their precious time and energy into maintaining the empire’s monuments. The ruination of the elements has made it look like it is weeping.  

 

* * *

 

 

Of course, she didn’t believe that it was Anakin at first. The burned half-man, laying on the clean table in the medical wing (morgue). Padmé was empty. For nine months there had been life inside her, growing. For four years there had been a husband by her side, cherished. For her entire life there had been the republic that she could lean on, that she could protect.

The chancellor (no, the emperor) stood on the other side of the table staring at her with those yellow eyes.

Do you see what the jedi have done? He asks, and the effort he puts into sounding sympathetic is so little that Padmé gags. It is the chancellor's (emperor’s) voice that gags her, not the smell of cooked flesh that hangs heavy in the air. (She is breathing Anakin in, and she knows that it will never leave her.)

She would deny that this is her husband, but she recognises the face underneath the burns. His eyes are still open and she knows those eyes.

Padmé looks at the corpse of her husband, the one she had loved more than anything, more than life, more than the world. He was dead, and the galaxy was flawed, and she thought that if only she had free hands, she could make it all better. She saw the flaws in the galaxy, she knew how to fix them. If only for a little while she had free hands she could make it all better…

There is emptiness in Padmé, the kind she has never felt before.

 

* * *

 

 

 The first time Leia Organa steps in to the senate chambers, she understands why the empire still exists. The imperial senate building is a dull grey building, filled with dull grey politicians. Becoming a politician, one at some point expects that everything associated with the ruling of the empire is dull and grey, but not so with the one keeping it all together. She is magnificent.

The Empress is beautiful and breath taking, as she walks into the senate meeting. Her dress trails meters and meters behind her as she walks. She is dressed in darkest blue, almost black, but when she walks, the dress ripples and thousands of white stars born and die in her dress, to the rhythm of her steps. Behind her head, her dark hair has been weaved to join with the diamond-decorated halo that frames her profile. When she sits on her throne, the handmaidens rush to fix the trails of the dress, so that it evenly flares out on either side of the throne.

Looking at the apparition before you, it was almost easy to forget that wrapped in the centre of it all was a small woman. Empress Padmé Naberrie. The nail keeping the entire empire together.

Leia swallows her awe back stubbornly. Yes, the empress is beautiful, but so are many other foul things. Shackles made of gold are still shackles, and Leia aims to be a lock pick, not a piece of jewelry. As the newest appointed senator, she is called forwards to kneel before the empress and swear loyalty. She does so flawlessly, and gains black amusement knowing that even in this moment, there is a memory disk of sensitive information hidden in her pocket which will later that night be leaked to the rebellion.

 

* * *

 

 

The Empress comes for Fulcrum on the third day of her imprisonment, deep in the lowest levels of Coruscant. She is dressed in white dress decorated with red jewels like drops of blood. Fulcrum wishes that the face wouldn’t look so much like senator Amidala’s.

“Why?” She begs and her guards aim their weapons steadily at Fulcrum. Like the force-suppressing shackles and the drugs weren’t already enough to make her harmless.

They are smart. It is no wonder that they have been chosen to guard the Empress.

“Can’t you see! Can’t you see what you have created!”

“Democracy created the clone wars. Democracy created Palpatine. He was voted into power; do you remember that? A sith lord, and they chose him. The people cannot be trusted with democracy.”

“And you cannot be trusted with the people.”

“He was right. As long as it works. Anakin was right all along. And it does work. It works so much better than the republic ever did. Anakin would have…Anakin would have loved it. No more war.

Fulcrum would have cried, but the drugs made her too hazy and unfocused even for that.

(She lives the rest of her life locked in that room. She goes mad after two years. She kills herself after four. The Empress mourns for her loss.)

 

* * *

 

 

Obi-wan regrets not going further that day. During the long years in exile, he revisits that day over and over in his memory, until the memory gets stretched thin and starts to twist. He fears that he no longer remembers true. Sometimes he hopes so. He remembers the flames and the ashes through a haze of pain so strong that his memory is more pain than anything else. Heat, scream, ash. (I hate you)

Obi-wan remembers the chaos in Coruscant. Remembers his own numb calm. Watching the end of the world through a glass made of his own madness. He remembers that he had been searching for Pad-

(He hates the Empress.)

He had found the twins instead. Hidden away by Palpatine, so beautiful and perfect. The only real things in the universe. He had taken them, he had clutched to them like a drowning man to a buoy.

He should have continued on, he sometimes thinks. Most of the time. He doesn’t know what he could have (would have) done if he had, but he still thinks so. He thinks so, even when he realises that then the twins would have probably died. (or worse.)

But he had already proven himself capable of killing those he loves. What would have one more death been in that day.

He wouldn’t have, he knows. He would have thrown himself at her feet, and she would have granted him the mercy of death. Because Obi-Wan is selfish like that, and would have taken the death from her, instead of granting it to her; because he had loved Anakin so much and would even take the reunion of death from his wife just to be with him again-

But these are only thoughts that come with the heat and the sandstorms. Thoughts like that are meaningless. 

 

* * *

 

 

The Empire Day festives are on full swing, the flowers, the lights, the decorations. The feasting, the singing and the plays. Coruscant shines like a beacon, with all of its lights glimmering in honour of the day.

In imperial opera house, the Empress sits on her own balcony, hidden by a dark veil. She always wears a veil on this day. Underneath her, the imperial court sits witnessing the play. The same one that is always played on this day.

On the stage the young Empress stands alone in the dark senate, her white dress shines under the spotlight. Opposite of her stands the sith-lord, hidden under a black cloak and forcing all of the other senators to dance in twisted rhythm as he commands. The young Empress is the only spot of light on the stage.

A man walks up to the security, and whispers something in his ear. A ripple of whispers is passed through the guards. The Empress underneath her veil is indifferent to their whispers.

More guards have been summoned to sweep the opera-house. They go through every door and leave no closet unchecked.

On the stage the Empress’ husband is murdered by the jedi. He dies after a beautifully choreographed duel, by a lightsabre through his heart. His dying words are poetic, and widely agreed to be one of the most touching poetry in modern history.

Through the vents, crawls a lone assassin, years of planning and work finally culminating on this moment.

Two poison darts take care of the guards on this side of the force-field that separates the Empress from the hallway. Dropping down from the vent, the assassin pulls out a black-market lightsaber. It crackles red in the ambient light of the theatre. Using the sabre to dissolve the generator keeping up the force-field, she is immediately engaged by the Empress’ closest guards. Her light-sabre cuts them apart easily, the force singing in her veins, delighted by the bloodshed, the dark side roaring-

She feels the coldness take over, as the blaster-bolt pierces her lung, deadly and firm. The Empress stands calm, her blaster steady on her grip.

“Goodbye Ventress.” The assassin hears as she dies.

On the stage, senator Amidala stands victorious, blaster held steady, as lord Sidious dies on the senate floor in the middle of what should have been his coronation. The audience stands up in thunderous applause, cheering as senator Amidala takes the throne by the behest of the grateful people she just saved from the tyranny of lord Sidious. The noise from the audience has masked the tumult happening in the balcony. It is only when the blood starts to drop on the heads of the people underneath it, that they look up.

 

* * *

 

 

Most people in the rebellion believe that the Empress exterminated the Kaminoeans purely for pragmatic reasons. They have the technology to create a private army in an extremely short time, and have proved to be lax concerning who they are willing to deal with in the past. No dictator would allow for such competition to exists in their galaxy.

Captain Rex does not entirely agree. He does not contest this narrative which is widely accepted in the rebellion, but privately he suspects that the Empress has acted according to her own twisted sense of justice. When she had still been a senator. (sane, humane, a friend) she had eagerly criticised Kamino’s practices as unethical. Rex fears that the sliver of old Padmé, that is still left in the Empress, might have sealed the fate of the Kaminoeans.

(Sealed the fate of the planet that Rex had once called home, for better or worse.)

 

* * *

 

 

Padmé feels sick, and it is not her pregnancy this time. Anakin had looked manic, like a man running at the edge of his endurance, but for whom stopping would mean death. And Padmé had wanted to help, to hold him, to do anything to make that look go away, but she had been powerless. She can see the smoke curling from the jedi temple, and she fears. She fears like never before.

She feels like she is falling into a black hole, like this is the moment before getting sucked into the event horizon.

There is a knock at the door of her apartment, and she welcomes the distraction. On the other side of that door are guards of the chancellor himself. They ask her to come with them.

She refuses. She has to stay. To wait for her husband. So that she can be there for him, when he comes back.

They don’t ask again. They take her.

The chancellor smiles as Padmé is brought to him. He explains that she is to stay with him as a guest, to ensure her safety. The safety of the children. To keep Anakin at ease.

The chancellor does not look like himself. He has turned into something else. Something that has yellow eyes and twisted skin and a leering, self-satisfied smile. Padmé is appalled.

“I think that we would work well together”, the chancellor explains. “You could have a place in my new court. The people love you”.

Who is this man? Padmé thinks; Trying to find any resemblance to the kindly chancellor that had been her friend.

 

* * *

 

 

The Empress misses her shot, when she sees the rebel that has foolishly tried to break the spy, the princess of Alderaan, from her holding cell in the imperial ship which is heading to Coruscant. She had thought that she was seeing the ghost of Anakin, running with the rebels trying to escape from her imperial ship.

She does not miss, when she sees the aged but very much alive Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Her court expresses concern that she had put herself that close to the rebels, but what else was she supposed to do when she saw Obi-Wan Kenobi in her security cameras. (the murderer.)

Afterwards, in Coruscant, she sits in her throne room; staring at the holo of the rebel with Anakin’s face and lightsaber, not daring even blink.


End file.
